Sweethearts

Right after the cheer competition Kenedy came home to get ready for the Sweethearts dance she was going to with Michael Piscione. I had a bridal shower to stop in at before I went home but as soon as I got home Kenedy had me in the bathroom doing her hair. She wore a skirt that I had bought for her right before Christmas and my lace shirt. 

Kenedy showed me  picture of how she wanted her hair on her phone and I think I did a perfect job replicating it. I love that I can do her hair fancy for fancy dances, it is a lot of fun and saves us a lot of money and stress.

Kenedy and Michael decided not to do a  corsage or boutonniere and so it was a quick stopover when he came to pick her up. I took a picture of them and then told them to do a different pose. I could tell they felt a little awkward and it was funny when they couldn't figure out a different pose to do, so I took a picture of them feeling awkward. 

He told us that they were going to Scentsy Commons to meet up with the rest of their group for pictures and then heading over to a pizza place for dinner. After dinner they were going to go to the dance and then to a friends house to hang out and watch a movie.

I love how her skirt shines in the sun!

All of the kids in the group go to Rocky Mountain High school except for Kenedy so she was a little nervous about being with them all when she didn't know them, except knowing Micheal her date of course, but she adapted and had a great time and she found out she knew one of the girls in the group who used to be in our ward and so that was a nice surprise.

After they left for the dance I went in the backyard to take some pictures of Ryker and Rylee who were playing around with the basketball. I think it is fun that my kids have siblings who have some of the same interests as them. Ryker and Rylee enjoy basketball and Avy and Kenedy are the cheerleaders. Life is good.

Districts!

On the 25th was the Districts competition for cheerleading. This is the competition that determines if you will make it to the State cheerleading competition. Leading up to this day was a lot of hard work and practices. Their are 4 categories to compete in, Show, Sideline, Pom and Stunt and Meridian High was entered to compete in all four. Kenedy was a part of all minus the stunt group which involved only 5 of the cheerleaders. 

Avynlea came with me and we had a lot of fun watching all of the performances. Kenedy's friend Wilson showed up but was only able to stay for one of her routines as well as one of Kenedy's young women's leader, Sister Pollock. She told me a couple of days later that she was only able to stay for the sideline performance and she video taped it and showed it to their Laurels class. I love the support that Kenedy has gotten from her Young Women leaders in our new ward, they have been so good to her.

I loved watching Kenedy and I love seeing how much she shines when she is cheering. After the competition she was telling me that before they went on for their first performance they had a team prayer led by Kenedy. I thought that was so neat and love how good of an example she is to her teammates. 

Lana sent me a text a couple of days later with a picture of Kenedy cheering that her husband found on the KTVB website. I love this picture and think Kenedy looks so pretty!

Kefford came for the pom performance and he stayed till the end and through awards. I am glad he showed up and it meant a lot to Kenedy to have him there. Meridian Warriors made it to State in all 4 categories which was so exciting! 

Rock Hop 80's Style

Rylee's Honor Choir had an 80's style Rock Hop they were putting on for the school as a fundraiser for their program. Rylee was really excited and told me a couple of days before hand that we needed to go shopping for some 80's clothes for her. I assured her that we will have no problem finding things for her to wear out of our own closets, no shopping necessary. When she came home from school the day of she was ready and anxious to start getting dressed up. I pulled a t-shirt from Kenedy's closet, leggings from Rylee's drawer, a jean jacket from Avynlea's closet and told Rylee to put them on. I tied up the shirt with a hair elastic and pulled half of her hair up in a side pony which I then wrapped with a headband that looked like a scrunch once it was in her hair. She put on some big hoop earrings, let me apply some purple and blue eyeshadow to her eye lids, put on her blue high top sneakers and she was transformed into a child of the 80"s!

Because Rylee was in Honor choir we did not have to pay for her or Kefford and I to get in. Avynlea I did have to pay for and we also bought some tickets so that the girls and Kefford could get some ice-cream. The Honor Choir sang "Africa" which is a popular song by Toto and they also sang "Don't stop Believing' " by Journey.  They kept the lights off on the stage when they were singing so they could do a lightening effect by flashing the lights at some points throughout the Africa song. They also kept the lights off during the second song which was annoying. I was videoing the songs and having the lights off on stage seemed backwards to me and the kids didn't show up as well in the video. Boo

After the entertainment was done the kids got to dance and have fun. I liked watching Rylee dance with her friends and watching Avynlea hang out/kindof dance with her friends. 

Our Kinderstars are doing a dance to the song "Hair Up" from the Trolls movie. After Kim and I picked the costume I saw a really cute tutorial on Pinterest for making Troll hair headbands. I talked it over with Kim and we thought it would be super cute and fun to make them for our dancers to wear during the dance and so I bought the supplies and with Avynlea's help got them put together. They turned out really cute and I am excited to see how they look on our cute little dancers.

Kenedy is 17!

On the 18th we celebrated Kenedy's 17th birthday. 17! Every year if baffles me how old my kids are getting and every year I think time needs to slow down just a little bit so I can catch a breath. But here we are with a 17 year old and life just keeps getting crazier and busier. 

Kenedy had cheer practice in the morning and while she was gone Kefford and I went to Target to find some last minute birthday gifts. She really didn't give us a wish list and so we were thinking we would just get her a gift card to Target and be done with it. While we were browsing around we came across a book that I knew Kenedy would love. For the past year Kenedy has been obsessed with the Broadway musical Hamilton, she has never seen it but she knows all about it and listens to and sings the music non-stop. In the book section of Target we found a book all about the making of Hamilton and also inside information and I think it even has a script in it. I was super excited about this find and we got that for her plus a gift card so she could go and pick out some new clothes or shoes or whatever. She also got an iPhone, something she has been wanting for a long time. Recently Kefford brother Jeremy upgraded to the new iPhone and he was willing to part with his old one and give it to Kenedy which was really cool of him. 

We gave her the gifts when she got home from practice and to say she was excited about all of them is an understatement. 

Kenedy wanted to go to McCall with a couple of friends for her birthday weekend but with all of the snow days they had to go to school on President's day to make up the lost days and so the three day weekend she wanted in McCall was not going to workout. We decided to postpone the McCall friends getaway until spring break. Alison dropped off Kenedy's birthday present and she gave Kenedy a pizza box with a cute "Receipt" and money and a fake pizza inside. She gave Kenedy enough money to treat her friends to a pizza dinner when they were in McCall and then also gave her 17 dollars for her 17th year. It was such a cute and creative gift, we all loved it!

For dinner Kenedy wanted homemade chicken and broccoli lemon fettuchini Alfredo with garlic bread. Avynlea helped me make it and it turned out so delicious. I used to buy the jars of Alfredovsauce but fell in love with it homemade a couple of years ago and will never buy the jar stuff again.

Instead of her small birthday bash in McCall with a few friends Kenedy decided she wanted a nerf gun war with a bunch of her friends. She wanted it here at our house and I told her no way was that going to happen. Kelsey said that they could use some of his empty office space for her war in Emmett and so that is what she did. I think she had about 16 friends show up and they all headed to Emmett with their guns and darts in tow. Kefford took the kids with him and I stayed behind to enjoy the peace and quiet.

After a couple of hours they came back and had cupcakes and ice-cream. Kenedy said she wanted chocolate cupcakes and so I made a batch of those and then made a batch of funfetti ones so that there would be enough with a variety to feed all of her friends.

After the treats Kenedy opened up presents that her friends brought. Anna's Mom is a beauty pageant director and Anna gifted Kenedy with a tiara from her Mom's collection. It is really pretty and I was a little bit wishing it were given to me...maybe Kenedy will let me borrow it someday. 

She got  a lot of fun stuff and after the presents I think they played some games and hung out having fun. It was a good birthday and Kenedy had a lot of fun.

A couple of days later Kenedy got some extra birthday fun in the mail. Whitney sent her a redbox gift card and a free ice-cream card from A&W. Whitney is always so good to remember my kids birthdays and sent=d them a little something, my kids and I really appreciate and love her for it.

My Mom sent Kenedy 17 dollars in birthday cash and giant sized candy bars of her favorite chocolate. So delicious! Kenedy was really excited about the birthday love!

Kenedy's Favorite Things

Food: Pasta

Dessert: Ice Cream

Candy: Symphony Bar

Book: The Host

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean

Church Song: Nearer my God to Thee

Radio Song: Heathens by 21 Pilots

Friend: Anna, McKoy and Wilson

Scripture Story: Stripling Warriors

Color: Aquamarine

Thing to do: Cheer

School Subject: History

5 Things I Love about Kenedy

1. I love Kenedy's devotion to and testimony of the Gospel. I know she has a firm testimony of prayer and works really hard to keep that relationship with her Heavenly Father open. She has a stake calling in our ward right now and is part of the YWAP stake committee. She goes to all of the Ward Conferences in our stake and helps teach the youth the Gospel. She also has a desire to serve a mission and while I would miss her tremendously I think she would be an amazing missionary and I love that this is one of her goals.

2. Kenedy is really beautiful but she is also really smart. She takes Honor and AP classes and gets really good grades. I am impressed with how hard she works in school and love hearing her talk about what she is learning. Her favorite subject is History which I think is really cool. She wants to be an elementary school teacher when she grows up and I think she will be an amazing teacher.

3. I love that Kenedy comes to me and talks to me about things going on in her life. She was always more into being with her friends and talking to them about life's miseries but as she has gotten older she has started coming to me more and it makes me so happy. I see a new/different relationship between us starting to develop that is headed towards friendship and that is exciting and makes me really happy.

4. I love that she is so into cheer and I love being able to go and watch her compete and cheer her on. She has grown so much in the sport and it is fun to watch and see her improvements. She is beautiful and friendly and excited and she just shines when she is cheering.

5. I love that Kenedy has her life goals and she does not let distractions get in her way. She is determined and I cannot wait to watch her life story unfold!

Scouted

Quite a few months ago, maybe it was in October or November,  Kenedy posted this picture on her instagram account. She got a lot of messages from her family and friends admiring the picture and how pretty she looks. She also got a message from a modeling agency telling her what a great picture it was and asking how tall she is and if they could Direct Message her. It seemed a little shady to us but Kenedy said OK and they said they were a modeling agency based in Portland and they were coming to Boise in December to scout new models and wanted Kenedy to come to the scouting. It was on a Sunday and Kenedy let them know that unfortunately that was not going to work for her and explained about her beliefs. They understood and said they were coming back in January and will be here on a Monday if that works better. After talking it over we thought it would be OK, I had to be at the meeting with her because she is not 18, but really,  I would have gone with her anyway because that is how I roll. It all seemed OK but we were still not sure what this what all about.

We were the first ones to arrive and they had Kenedy fill out an info sheet while we were waiting for other kids to get there. Once all the potential models arrived we met the owners of the agency and they explained what they do and how the agency worked with models. They then measured each kids to see how tall they were and then took a "mugshot" of each kid with their info sheet. 

When Kenedy was getting her picture taken Darren, the co owner, saw her name and recognized it from her instagram account and mentioned how hard they had to work to get her there. They seemed to really like her. After taking a few minutes to privately look these pictures and info sheets over they thanked everyone for coming and then excused 3 of the kids saying they would not be able to find work for them. The rest of the kids, I think there were about 6, they said they wanted to talk to individually about what they saw for their modeling future. Since Kenedy and I were the first to arrive we got to go in with Darren and Tiffany first. 

They told us how excited they were about Kenedy and how beautiful she is. They essentially said they could get her work in the Northwest region that they specialize in but they also see her as being a very successful international model. I talked to them about my concerns with this industry and our morals and they seemed OK with it all and said Kenedy would never be put in a situation or even an outfit that she was not morally comfortable in. Basically they made us feel comfortable and I felt fine about it all. 

After going home to get some outfits we went back so they could take some digitals of Kenedy for a model info sheet to put on their website for clients to look at. It was a lot of fun watching Kenedy get her photos taken and Tiffany was super complementary of her the entire time she was taking the pictures. She was really good at putting her at ease and making her feel special.

Since then we have had another meeting with them where they talked to Kenedy again about their desire for her to do international modeling but that was something they could wait until she was 18 to explore if she wanted. Kenedy told me later that she was good with just doing modeling in the northwest region if she happened to get jobs but that doing the international stuff or even making modeling a career was not in her future plans. I love that Kenedy has her head on straight and is open to opportunities but keeps her focus on her goals. 

I did ask Tiffany how they found Kenedy and she says that they used to have to go to county fairs and malls to scout for potential models but with social media they look up High Schools in different areas and find their different sports teams pages and branch out from there following hashtags and friends. She said it is like a big spiderweb connecting and following and searching. It seems pretty complicated but made a lot of sense.

We don't know if really anything will come of this but we will take it for what it is and if something comes along that is great but it not that is fine also.

Ice Skating

For Mutual Wednesday night the kids got to go ice skating. I was not there but some of the leaders who were took pictures and posted them online. It looked like they had a lot of fun and none of my kids got hurt, thank heavens!

Valentine's Day

On Monday for Family Home Evening we talked about the Plan of Salvation. Avynlea did a great job being the "Vanna White".

Tuesday was Valentines Day!  I made Oreo truffles the day before and packaged them up nicely and wrote a valentine to each of my kids and to Kefford telling them a couple of things I love about them. They came downstairs Tuesday morning to those on the counter along with some Valentine goodies from Grandma Alison. 

Kenedy is always in a rush to get out the door in the mornings and she was gone before I could think to get a picture of her, but not before we had family prayer. For her first semester of Junior year Kenedy had early morning seminary and would leave for school right before 6:00. After a couple of days into this schedule I was thinking about how sad it is that Kenedy couldn't start the day off right by having family prayer with all of us and so Kefford and I started getting up before she left to have a prayer with her. For her second semester Kenedy decided to change her schedule and go back to release time seminary rather then early morning. I am so happy that we can all be together again in the mornings for "all of our family" family prayers. 

I managed to get a picture of Ryker and Avynlea before they rushed out the door with Kefford to catch their bus. I love that my kids are now taking the bus, it has made life a lot nicer for me in the mornings and after school.

I did a really pretty Valentine's Hairdo in Avy and Rylee's hair. Because she was in such a rush to leave, the picture I took of the back of Avynlea's hair was a little blurry. 

Only one kid left in Elementary school and that means only one set of class Valentine's! We found a cute idea on Pinterest and I found that I could order the gummy bears from Amazon. I ordered them last Friday and they scheduled them to arrive on Valentine's Day. That was not going to work for us. Kefford had printed the Valentine's for us when he went to his parent's house over the weekend and since we already had the cards we needed to find another way to get the gummy bears. Luckily we found out the World Market carries them and Kefford went and got us a bag on Monday. When Rylee got home from school she was able to get her Valentine's put together and they looked really cute. 

side note: the gummy bears came during the day today and I was able to stop the UPS man so he could take the box back and send it back to Amazon for me. Hopefully I get my money back.

I also volunteered to make the sweet treat for her class party and when Alison brought us Valentines she also brought us some cookie dough! I used that to make 4 dozen heart shaped cookies which Kefford and Rylee helped frost and decorate. I had enough for the party, for us to eat at home and we gave some to the kids bus drivers. Avynlea also took in a couple to her favorite teacher. We love sugar cookies!

A Valentine Selfie :)

A couple of days before Valentines Day Ryle's teacher sent out a signup email to signup for things to take to the party. They are only allowed one sweet treat and then the rest of the goodies are supposed to be healthy items. I did a healthy item for her Halloween party and decided to sign up to do the sweet treat and I wrote that I would bring sugar cookies. I made the cookies and brought them to the school and then stuck around for a little bit. While I was in their another Mom came in with a bag and she told the teacher she brought sugar cookies to contribute to the party. Rylee's teacher looked a little taken aback but said OK and added them to the table. I. Was. Ticked. I spent a lot of my day making these cookies and here another Mom comes in with store bought cookies. There was a sign up for a reason and it just really got to me that she did that. Ugh. I had to leave to pickup Avy from school and when I came back to get my plate there were still a lot of cookies on it. I was happy to take them back home because we all love sugar cookies and will eat them but it bugs me that it happened.

Rylee was super cute with her Valentine's Box that we created. She had a fun time at her party and that is all that matters. That and that nobody ate my cookies.

When Kefford got home from work we left to go eat dinner at Red Robin. Kefford and I like to go out to eat on Valentines Day and it is nice to have an excuse to go out as a couple randomly in the middle of the week. There were a lot of people waiting but it went quick and we only had to wait about 30 minutes for a table. The food was delicious and the company was even better. It was a good night.

I made the kids our traditional heart shaped meatloaf for dinner. I also put potatoes on the stove to boil but had to leave before they were finished. Ryker was put in charge of finishing the mashed potatoes and I told him to put a little food coloring in to make them pink for Valentines. He went way overboard on the color and they turned out to be a very bright red. I appreciated his help nonetheless.

After we got home we gathered together for family prayer and after I told everyone they had to say one thing they love about everyone else. I also told them I was exempt since I already did that in the cards they all received from me. 

I took some pictures while we were sitting around and since Kenedy thinks I do not take enough pictures of her I made sure to take extra of her.